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Ma Vhelas'an
Ma Vhelas'an was a location of spiritual value to many people, especially those of Southern Quel'thalas. Discovered after the elves' settlement of the peninsula, it became a place of power and a pilgrimage site for many travelers from each corner of the realm. According to belief, the tree has a will and a memory of its own. It held the essence of eternity, of All Time, in its boughs; it remembered and preserved the land and its people in its knowledge, and was revered as a source of oracular guidance and funerary rites. In the present day, unfortunately, it is a dead husk where it once stood, blighted by the passing of the Scourge and never reclaimed. Even then, however, it had laid dormant for hundreds of years; the reason why such a thing occurred has always been a forlorn mystery. Pieces of it do remain, however, in scattered favors and relics across Quel'thalas' and its history - such objects are rarely anything less than the subject of important people and events. Spiritual Import Ma Vhelas'an was not a place of arcane power or a particular conflux of the ley, but a timeless place where memory and history was preserved in a way far more sacred than simple tales and libraries. To a long-lived people of rich history and culture, Eternity beyond even themselves was idealized in a near-religious manner in relation to the Tree of Time. In the scope of visitors and pilgrims, however, the tree was a place to receive omens and portents, oracular guidance about the past, future, or even the distant present. It was not uncommon to ask the tree for portents about a newborn babe's life, a quest, personal strife, or even the affairs of a House. Just as often the tree had importance in a funerary context; as rare and impactful as death was for the near-immortal elves, it was a place where mourning pilgrims could speak on the lives and deeds of their loved ones to commit them to the tree's eternal memory, and take solace that within it they would persist and be remembered. Therein also lies the greatest tragedy of the tree's dormancy, and its death; hundreds of years of mourning rites could not be performed with the tree's silence, and millennia of knowledge and lives would be destroyed by the Scourge's march on Quel'thalas. The Keeper The sole voice and steward of Ma Vhelas'an was the Keeper ''- those who alone in succession would possess an attunement to the tree by its own choosing. They would wield power over Time by invocation, act as the tree's emissary, and would perform the many rites and divinations that were held to be sacred to it. The magic of the Keepers is scarcely known, couched in mystery and lore - they are supposedly workers of miracles, capable of erasing wounds, altering the fabric of the world in a way unlike any spellcraft, and even resurrection of the dead. Much of this uncertainty arises from the fact that a Keeper would never physically leave the grove of Ma Vhelas'an (but would magically project themselves from afar), except for the time one took up a blade and went to war. The Keeper holds an immense amount of social power among the people who pay reverence to Ma Vhelas'an, and despite having no formalized power in the Silver Ridge Mountains, the word of a Keeper is almost never understood as anything so simple as advice. This also - much to the displeasure of the Keepers themselves, of course - often subjects them to the political biases and machinations of Houses beyond the Tree of Time itself. There have been five Keepers in total, each of them found through portents and omens interpreted by the ''Firebreak Coven and chosen through anointment ceremony - a process which takes place after the death of each Keeper. They have been, in succession: the Sage, the Caretaker, the Scholar, the Warrior, and the'' Weaver.'' There was no Keeper to succeed the Fifth, however, as the tree refused to anoint a Sixth - the beginning of its long silence in the few hundred years before the Fall of Quel'thalas. It is unfortunately held that the Keepers, for all the importance of their role, are a thing of the distant past. Alternative Beliefs By the decentralized nature of Thalassian religion, the beliefs surrounding Ma Vhelas'an are often mutable by the regions from which pilgrims travel. To the faithful of Belore, it is often seen as incarnation of the Sun on Earth; a vessel for Life and Time, and atimes a conduit of sorts. Others, who linger upon old druidic faiths, often liken the Tree of Time's eternal memory to a component of the Dreaming. Rarely these extraneous beliefs are legitimized directly by the Keeper - but then, they are a mysterious figure regardless. Category:Quel'Thalas Locations Category:Places